WarInContext: Is War Talk Just Talk?. Post cites an Financial Times article by Daniel Dombey, Demetri Sevastopulo and Andrew Ward, "'And then what? A strike on Iran may be one problem too many for Bush," and adds an editor's comment which among other things posits a number of questions for presidential candidates to think about. This got me to writing, so I submitted the following comment:

One thing no one talks about regarding Iran's nuclear program is whether Iran should have what they say they really want: nuclear power plants. In many ways, the scariest thing about Iranian nuclear power isn't that they could produce bombs; it's that they could create another Chernobyl. That's a tough issue for Bush to raise because he's pro-nuclear power -- wants to sell US nuclear technology abroad, e.g., to India. It probably also figures into the French position, since a self-sufficient Iranian nuclear power industry would cut into France's leading position. It's also tough for Bush because it raises the Peak Oil issue: if Iran is worried about making the transition to a world with declining petroleum output, shouldn't net oil importers like the US be worried too? Once you accept that Peak Oil is a real problem, then nuclear power has to be taken seriously because, like it or not, it's an option on people's minds -- for that matter, it also comes up in the context of Global Warming, another problematic issue for Bush. So it seems likely that to some extent the US (and France) are opposing the proliferation of nuclear power, permitted under the NPT, under the guise of opposing bombs. A more sensible, more realistic approach would be to look to extend the NPT to ensure better safety standards, but US failure to disarm under the NPT and Bush's commitment to building even more bombs are once again in the way. So add all that to your list of aspiring presidential issues.

Robert Dreyfuss: Who's the Enemy?. Subtitled: "In Iraq, It's Getting Harder to Find Any Bad Guys." This seems like a reasonable summary of the so-called good news coming out of Iraq -- the reduction in US and probably Iraqi casualties over three consecutive months. This seems to be the result of two things: US-armed Sunni tribal leaders turning on Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the truce with the Mahdi Army. Neither of these things have much to do with the Surge, which had produced markedly higher casualty rates for all sides over the past year. Indeed, I suspect that much of the improvement is the result of US forces stepping back -- i.e., that the level of violence is primarily determined by how aggressive US forces are in Iraq. The corollary is that the US could have reduced casualties at any point by acting less aggressively.

Dreyfus may be right that the lull could be used to establish a more viable political settlement, but that will only work if the Bush administration gets realistic about what it can and cannot accomplish in Iraq. Whether that can happen is something that can be debated, but there's no precedent for it: there have been times when things got so bad that Bush temporarily backed down (e.g., the first siege of Fallujah), but every time things looked up Bush escalated his ambitions back to impossible levels. Even now, we see the administration's instinct for the wild side in its escalating Iran war rhetoric. Bush's new friends among the Sunnis and Sadrists aren't likely to stick with him over the long haul. They've basically improved their position vs. Bush's old friends and bought some time, maybe until saner heads take over in Washington.

Tom Engelhardt: As the World Burns. Occasioned by the drought that is threatening to turn Atlanta dry, or is it Australia? or Albania? Actually, it's all over the map. While Peak Oil seems to me to be the most inexorable crisis that's heading down the pike, it's not inconceivable that we could run into a severe water crunch even sooner. Drought-induced water shortages are only part of the story. Increasing demand, often in locations that are poorly planned and marginally served, is another, as is depletion, whether in the form of aquifers being pumped dry, reservoirs silting up, or salinization making fresh water supplies unusable. All these things raise big and difficult questions, which as Engelhardt points out, are rarely given much recognition let alone public thought:

Honestly, I don't demand answers. Just a little investigation, some thought, and a glimpse or two over that precipice as the world turns. . . . and bakes and burns.

Jonathan Cohn: Creative Destruction. Subtitle is "The best case against universal health care," by which Cohn means the argument that private sector investment in the US leads to major innovations in health care that we'd lose if we adopted a more economical (e.g., better managed) system. Cohn works through an example, then points out that most innovation in the US is actually publicly funded before the private profiteers take over:

The single biggest source of medical research funding, not just in the United States but in the entire world, is the National Institutes of Health (NIH): Last year, it spent more than $28 billion on research, accounting for about one-third of the total dollars spent on medical research and development in this country (and half the money spent at universities). The majority of that money pays for the kind of basic research that might someday unlock cures for killer diseases like Alzheimer's, aids, and cancer. No other country has an institution that matches the NIH in scale. And that is probably the primary explanation for why so many of the intellectual breakthroughs in medical science happen here.

There's no reason why this has to change under universal health insurance. NIH has its own independent funding stream. And, during the late 1990s, thanks to bipartisan agreement between President Clinton and the Republican Congress, its funding actually increased substantially--giving a tremendous boost to research. With or without universal coverage, subsequent presidents and Congress could ramp up funding again--although, if they did so, they would be breaking with the present course. It so happens that, starting in 2003, President Bush and his congressional allies let NIH funding stagnate, even though the cost of medical research (like the cost of medicine overall) was increasing faster than inflation. The reason? They needed room in the budget for other priorities, like tax cuts for the wealthy. In this sense, the greatest threat to future medical breakthroughs may not be universal health care but the people who are trying so hard to fight it.

Cohn is the author of Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis -- And the People Who Pay the Price (Harper Collins).

Tony Karon: Benazir vs. Musharraf is Punch vs. Judy. Meaning they're both controlled by the same pupeteer. Seems about right, especially the part about how proxies have their own less than predictable interests. One of the letters points out that corruption is so endemic in Pakistan that even the Supreme Court is tainted. However, you got to start somewhere. Throughout most history the state has acted as a self-interested racket. The key idea to democracy is to flip the state, to turn it into a public servant. This rarely if ever happens in a single change. Indeed, even in well established democracies politics manages to attract the corrupt, and it takes a good deal more vigilance than America seems capable of to keep them at bay.

Frederick W. Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon: Pakinstan's Collapse, Our Problem. OK, it turns out that the real men don't just want to go to Tehran anymore. They also want to invade Islamabad. And in this case the WMD are undoubtedly real, so the stakes are far higher. So, for that matter, are the risks. The ones these geniuses concede are:

With 160 million people, Pakistan is more than five times the size of Iraq. It would take a long time to move large numbers of American forces halfway across the world. And unless we had precise information about the location of all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and materials, we could not rely on bombing or using Special Forces to destroy them.

The task of stabilizing a collapsed Pakistan is beyond the means of the United States and its allies. Rule-of-thumb estimates suggest that a force of more than a million troops would be required for a country of this size. Thus, if we have any hope of success, we would have to act before a complete government collapse, and we would need the cooperation of moderate Pakistani forces.

One possible plan would be a Special Forces operation with the limited goal of preventing Pakistan's nuclear materials and warheads from getting into the wrong hands. Given the degree to which Pakistani nationalists cherish these assets, it is unlikely the United States would get permission to destroy them. Somehow, American forces would have to team with Pakistanis to secure critical sites and possibly to move the material to a safer place.

They propose New Mexico, but figure their Pakistani friends will insist on keeping the WMDs in some safe redoubt, "guarded by elite Pakistani forces backed up (and watched over) by crack international troops." (Maybe they can store them in Osama bin Laden's cave?) They go on to propose sending troops to help "pro-American moderates" in "the military and security forces hold the country's center -- primarily the region around the capital, Islamabad, and the populous areas like Punjab Province to its south."

This is way beyond nutty. It's like guys who have painted themselves into a corner, then deciding the only way out is to blow a hole in the wall, having no idea what's on the other side, what's likely to come down on them, or how they'll even take cover from the initial blast. It's what you get from people whose intellectual toykit only has guns and bombs. It never occurs them that the only sane option is to not get into such stupid predicaments in the first place. Indeed, why should they? If we avoided the problem, they wouldn't get to use all those guns and bombs, and how much fun would that be?

But even worse than their juvenile war fantasies is their presumption that even "pro-American moderate" Pakistanis will happily let us barge in and make a mockery of their sovereignty and wreck their country, with all the "collateral damage" we inevitably produce. Arrogance doesn't even begin to describe this sort of madness.